Ava: Terms of Use

Smart Hatch LLC · Last updated 11 November 2026 · Version 2026-11-11 · Contact james@smart-hatch.com · Privacy policy · Support avasail.com/support · Français

The short version

• Ava helps you plan. It does not sail your boat. It is not a chart. It is not a navigation aid.
• The skipper decides. Every Go, Go with caution and Do not go is a suggestion. You make the call.
• Warnings are always free. Storm, cyclone, quake and tsunami warnings, and every anchor alarm, work on the free plan.
• Ava Pro is a subscription. Yearly and monthly plans renew until you cancel them in the store. The season pass does not renew.
• New installs get 14 days of Pro free. No card. Nothing is charged. It ends by itself.
• Refunds come from the store, by the store's rules.
• Be kind in Boats nearby and in comments. Share only true things about your own boat.
• Florida law applies, but your own country's consumer rights still protect you.

1. Who we are

1.1 Who sells Ava to you depends on the store.

• Google Play: Smart Hatch LLC, a Florida limited liability company, 1317 Edgewater Dr #3333, Orlando, FL 32804-6350, USA.
• Apple App Store: the seller named on Ava's App Store page. Today that is Brittany Stone, a member and manager of Smart Hatch LLC, selling Ava for Smart Hatch LLC. Later it will be Smart Hatch LLC.

1.2 In these terms, "we" and "us" mean the seller in 1.1 for the store you used, and Smart Hatch LLC, which owns Ava and runs its server.

1.3 When the App Store seller changes to Smart Hatch LLC, Smart Hatch LLC takes over every right and duty under these terms from Brittany Stone. Your subscription, its price and its renewal date stay the same. We will tell you in the app. You do not need to do anything.

1.4 "Ava" means the Ava app on Android and iPhone, the web version, our forecast server, and the data files the app downloads from us.

1.5 You accept these terms when you install or use Ava. If you do not accept them, do not use Ava.

1.6 You must be 18 or older to buy a subscription.

2. Ava is a planning aid, not a navigation aid: the skipper decides

2.1 Ava is a planning and briefing aid for pleasure boats. It is not a nautical chart. It is not a chartplotter, a navigation aid, a weather service, a tsunami warning service or a safety-of-life service.

2.2 Everything Ava shows is a prediction or an estimate. This includes route lines, Go, Go with caution and Do not go, departure windows, the Daily Brief, tide and current figures, fuel figures and arrival times. A computer makes them from other people's forecasts and maps. No person checks them before you see them.

2.3 Forecasts can be wrong. Reef lines come from volunteer maps and can be missing or in the wrong place. Tide heights are model output, not chart datum. Boat speeds for a boat with no logs are estimates.

2.4 You must not rely on Ava alone. Use official charts, official weather and tsunami warnings, your own eyes and your own seamanship. When Ava and an official source disagree, follow the official source.

2.5 The anchor watch can fail. It depends on your phone's GPS, battery, settings and operating system. It can stay silent, sound late or sound for nothing. Keep watch in other ways too.

2.6 Boats nearby can fail. A boat that drags may not share, may share late, or may have no signal. A missing alert does not mean you are safe.

2.7 Passage alerts can fail. A passage alert re-checks a plan you saved. It is a planning check, not a warning service. It may not run, may run late, or may miss a change.

2.8 Going to sea is dangerous. The decision to go, the route, the timing and the handling of the boat are the skipper's alone.

2.9 Nothing in Ava is professional advice. That includes navigation, weather, legal, customs and medical advice. Local rules in Ava are dated notes with their sources. Check them locally.

3. Your data

3.1 Our privacy policy (https://avasail.com/privacy/, Version 4) says what leaves your phone and why. It is part of these terms.

3.2 Your boat, logs, anchor history, crew list and notes stay on your phone and in backup files you make. We cannot see them. We cannot get them back for you.

4. No accounts

4.1 Ava has no user accounts. A subscription belongs to your Google Play or Apple account. Use Restore purchases in Settings > Plan & billing to bring it to a new phone.

4.2 One subscription works on up to ten of your own devices at a time. A device drops off 30 days after it was last used, which frees its place.

5. The free plan and Ava Pro

5.1 The free plan, always free:

• every warning and safety signal: storm, cyclone, quake, tsunami, lightning, wind shift and pressure;
• the anchor watch, its circle and every alarm (drag, GPS lost, watch stopped);
• the Daily Brief, every tile, with its warnings;
• the Log: record and view;
• the tours, the guide, places and local rules;
• 2 A-to-B passage plans and 1 multi-stop trip a week, each in full;
• Boats nearby: your boat shares its anchor circle, and you get the dragging-boat alert with a map of that alert;
• your backup file (export and import of your own data).

5.2 Ava Pro adds:

• unlimited passage plans and trips;
• the best-departure finder;
• ocean and multi-day passages;
• passage alerts: Ava re-checks the plans you save and tells you when the forecast for them changes;
• the anchor watch's location history: the swing line and the heat map;
• the Boats nearby map, showing every boat around you;
• your boat's own speeds (polars) from your Log;
• live data from your boat's instruments (Victron, NMEA, Signal K);
• region updates between app releases;
• exports of routes, tables and plans (GPX, CSV, plan files), and more than one boat.

5.3 Passage alerts are a planning feature. They are not a warning service. Every live warning stays on the free plan: the Daily Brief's warning rows, the storm, cyclone, quake and tsunami warnings, and every anchor alarm. When Pro ends, the plans you saved stay, and the free warnings keep working.

5.4 Try a Pro feature once. On the free plan, the first use of each of six Pro features is free, once: one finder run, one ocean plan, one instrument session, one polar view, one look at the anchor history and one look at the Boats nearby map. After that, Ava shows what Pro adds. It never blocks a warning.

5.5 14 days of Pro on us. A new install gets 14 days of Pro, with no card and no purchase. On day 15 it moves to the free plan by itself. Nothing is charged and nothing renews. There is one trial per install. We may refuse a second trial started from the same device or network within 30 days. There is no separate free trial in the store.

5.6 We count "a week" from Monday 00:00 in your phone's time zone. A plan for the same from-to pair again in the same week is not counted twice. Unused plans do not carry over.

5.7 We may change what each plan includes. We will never move a warning or an anchor alarm off the free plan. If we take a Pro feature away during your paid period, you can ask the store for a refund (6.6).

6. Subscriptions and payment

6.1 What you can buy. Prices are in US dollars. The store shows your local price and any tax before you pay.

6.2 The store takes the payment. Google Play or the Apple App Store takes the payment. Your payment details go to the store, never to us.

6.3 Auto-renewal. A yearly, monthly or Wayfinders plan renews at the end of each period. The store charges your account up to 24 hours before the period ends. It renews until you cancel.

6.4 How to cancel. Cancel in the store at least 24 hours before the period ends:

• Android: Google Play > your picture > Payments & subscriptions > Subscriptions > Ava > Cancel.
• iPhone: Settings > your name > Subscriptions > Ava > Cancel Subscription.
• In Ava: Settings > Plan & billing > Manage opens the store's page.

After you cancel, Pro stays on until the end of the period you paid for.

6.5 Price changes. We may change the price for future periods. The store tells you first. Where the store requires it, you must agree before you pay a higher price. A change never applies to a period you have already paid for.

6.6 Refunds. The store handles refunds under its own rules. We cannot refund a store payment ourselves.

• Google Play: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2479637
• Apple: https://reportaproblem.apple.com

If your country's law gives you a right to cancel a purchase (for example the 14-day right in the EU and the UK), you have that right as your local law provides, and you use it through the store. That law also says what happens to the part of the period you have already used.

6.7 Wayfinders. The Wayfinders plan is open to anyone, with no code, until 500 Wayfinders subscriptions have been bought across both stores. A subscription counts when the store first confirms a payment for it, never at a trial. After the 500th, the plan is no longer sold and the Ava Pro yearly plan ($79) is the yearly plan on sale. If you buy in the last moments before the 500th and the store sells you the plan, you keep it.

Its price is $49 a year and stays $49 while your subscription keeps renewing without a break, also after the plan is no longer sold. If you cancel and it lapses, or a payment fails and the store ends it, the Wayfinders price ends too; if you come back, the normal price applies. The store may add local tax, and in some countries the store converts the price to local money; we will not raise the $49 itself.

6.8 Testers (the Crew). Testers are the people who hold a beta code, plus the owners. Before paid plans start, we give them 30 days' notice in the app. A tester gets Ava Pro free, with no card and no end date, on the devices the code is used on (4.2). This is a gift. It has no cash value, cannot be refunded, sold or moved to another person, and ends only under 6.9, 9.2 or 12.3. A tester may also buy any plan, including the Wayfinders plan while it is sold; a paid plan does not end the gift.

6.9 Codes. A beta code is for one person and works on up to three of their devices. It cannot be sold, posted publicly or shared. We may cancel a code that was sold, posted or shared, and the gift in 6.8 then ends. A code is not money and unlocks nothing but the gift in 6.8.

6.10 When Pro ends. Your data stays on your phone. The warnings and the anchor watch keep working. The free plan's limits apply again. We delete nothing on your phone.

6.11 Fair use. Each plan has a fair-use limit on forecast requests, shown in Settings. It is set well above normal use. We may slow an install that sends far more requests than a person could.

6.12 Extras. Wayfinders and testers may get extras such as an in-app badge or an invitation to a group chat. These are a thank-you, not part of what you pay for. We may change or end them.

7. Boats nearby: the rules

7.1 Boats nearby lets boats anchored near each other see each other's anchor circle and warns them when one drags. While your anchor watch runs, your boat shares its circle by default. You can turn sharing off in the Anchor tab at any time. Where the law asks for consent (for example in the EU and the UK), sharing starts only after you press OK on the notice.

7.2 Share only your own boat. Do not share a position you are not at. Do not pretend to be another boat.

7.3 Your boat name. A boat shows as "A boat" until you type a name. The name must not be rude, hateful, a person's full name without their consent, a phone number, a web address or an advert. We may hide any name.

7.4 No tracking of others. Do not use Boats nearby to follow, watch or harass another boat or person. Do not collect or store other boats' positions. Do not use scripts or bots to read Boats nearby.

7.5 No false alarms. Do not send a false "dragging" state.

7.6 We may stop an install from using Boats nearby if it breaks these rules. Its alarms for your own boat keep working.

8. Comments and corrections

8.1 You can send comments, corrections and confirmations about places, rules and boats ("contributions"). You send them yourself. A catalog correction is sent when you save a changed catalog boat while that switch is on.

8.2 What you may send. Only facts you saw yourself or have the right to share. Do not copy a guidebook, chart or another app. Do not name a private person, and do not attack a person or business. No adverts, spam, threats or illegal content.

8.3 We read everything first. Nothing you send is published by itself. We may edit, hold or refuse any contribution.

8.4 Licence to the public. Each contribution is licensed to everyone under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). We credit your editor handle, or "a user".

8.5 Licence to us. You also give Smart Hatch LLC a worldwide, permanent, free licence to use, change, combine and publish the contribution in Ava and its data files, including combining it with OpenStreetMap data under the Open Database License. As far as the law allows, you agree not to assert moral rights against these uses.

8.6 You can ask us to remove a contribution. Facts already merged into a published data file may stay there, without your name.

9. Acceptable use

9.1 Do not:

• copy, resell or share Ava's forecasts or data files as a service of your own;
• try to get or use our server keys, or get around a plan's limits;
• take Ava apart, except where the law allows it;
• use Ava for commercial shipping or to carry paying passengers;
• break the rules of the data providers on our attribution page.

9.2 If you break these terms, we may limit your install to the free plan or stop it from using our server. The warnings that need no server keep working on your phone.

10. Where Ava is offered, and sanctions

10.1 Ava is offered in the countries shown on its store pages. It is not offered where US sanctions forbid it, or where a local licence is needed that we do not hold.

10.2 You may not use Ava if you are on a US sanctions list, or in a country or region under a full US embargo (today: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine).

11. Other people's data

11.1 Ava uses data from the providers listed at https://avasail.com/attribution/, under their licences. Several of them say their data is not for navigation. Their disclaimers apply to you too.

11.2 Map data from OpenStreetMap is under the Open Database License. You can ask for a free copy of the map data we built from it.

12. Changes and availability

12.1 We may add, change or remove features, regions and data files.

12.2 Our server and the services it uses can be down. Ava then shows the last forecast it has, with its age. We do not promise that Ava is always available.

12.3 We may close Ava with 30 days' notice in the app. If you have paid time left, ask the store for a pro-rata refund.

13. Ownership, Apple and Google

13.1 Smart Hatch LLC owns Ava, its code, its own data and its words, or has licences for them. Boat makes and models are named only so you can find your boat. We are not linked to any builder.

13.2 Apple and Google are not parties to these terms and are not responsible for Ava, its content, support or any claim about it.

13.3 iPhone. Apple's standard licence (the "Licensed Application End User License Agreement") applies to Ava from the App Store. These terms add to it. Where they conflict, Apple's standard licence wins on the licence itself, and these terms win on everything else. Apple and its subsidiaries may enforce that licence against you.

14. Our liability

14.1 Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit. That includes death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, and mandatory product-safety or product-liability law.

14.2 Apart from 14.1, and as far as the law allows:

• Ava is provided "as is" and "as available";
• we give no promise that Ava is accurate, complete, or right for your trip;
• we are not liable for loss that comes from relying on Ava against clause 2, from other people's data, from a phone or network failure, or from events outside our control;
• we are not liable for indirect loss, such as lost time, lost bookings or lost profit;
• our total liability for all claims is limited to the amount you paid for Ava in the 12 months before the claim, or US$100 if you paid nothing.

14.3 If you are a consumer in the EU, the UK, Australia, New Zealand or another country with mandatory consumer law, you keep those rights. Where these terms conflict with such a right, the right wins.

14.4 The legal guarantee. If you are a consumer, your local law may give you a guarantee that Ava works as we describe it (in the EU and the UK, the legal guarantee of conformity for digital content and services). That guarantee applies to Ava as well as these terms, and nothing here takes it away. If Ava does not work as described, write to us at james@smart-hatch.com and we will try to fix it; if we cannot, you can ask for a price cut or a refund as that law provides, through the store.

15. Governing law and disputes

15.1 Florida law governs these terms, without its conflict-of-law rules.

15.2 If you are a consumer, you also keep the protection of the law where you live, and you may bring a claim in your own country's courts where that law gives you that right.

15.3 Before any claim, write to us at james@smart-hatch.com and give us 30 days to fix it.

15.4 Disputes are decided by the courts. There is no arbitration and no class-action waiver. Apart from 15.2, the courts are the state and federal courts in Orange County, Florida.

16. Changes to these terms

16.1 We may change these terms. The app shows the date of the current version. For a big change, the app asks you to accept it before you go on. The current version is always at https://avasail.com/terms/.

16.2 A change to price or renewal never applies to a period you have already paid for.

17. General

17.1 If a court finds part of these terms invalid, the rest still applies.

17.2 If we do not enforce a clause straight away, we can still enforce it later.

17.3 You may not transfer these terms to someone else. We may transfer them to a company that takes over Ava, or from Brittany Stone to Smart Hatch LLC (1.3), and we will tell you in the app.

18. Contact

Smart Hatch LLC, 1317 Edgewater Dr #3333, Orlando, FL 32804-6350, USA. Email: james@smart-hatch.com. For App Store purchases before the move, the same address and email reach Brittany Stone.

Version 11 November 2026.